


Reading Music

by ReasonPapers



Category: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-01
Updated: 2018-11-01
Packaged: 2019-08-14 02:50:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16484630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReasonPapers/pseuds/ReasonPapers
Summary: "Truth is, everybody is going to hurt you." - Bob Marley





	Reading Music

**Author's Note:**

> I'm consolidating some fics here on AO3. This was a 2011 fic posted in an LAS competition. Prompt: "Truth is, everybody is going to hurt you; you just gotta find the ones worth suffering for." - Bob Marley

Sarah never would have bought it for herself. It was small, sleek, and impressive-- exactly the kind of technology that made her uneasy. John had thrust it clumsily at her one morning while she was slumped over a cup of coffee. She glared at him over her cup, and he failed to connect her aversion to the device itself.

“I got the magenta one because I thought it seemed the least threatening.” 

And then he gave this shy, hopeful smile and Sarah's resistance evaporated. She mirrored his lopsided grin and begrudgingly picked up the little iPod. 

“I've already put some music on it. I just... thought you might like to listen to it sometime.”

What Sarah knew he was saying, what her brave, caring, teenage son was saying, was that he'd noticed the bags under her eyes. He knew she'd barely slept in days, knew her mind wouldn't slow down, knew her body was on constant overdrive.

She'd scrolled through the iPod that night long after everyone else had gone to sleep. No dance music, no raging punk. Just calm, mellow sounds-- calm, mellow sounds that she'd grown to depend on. But tonight her iPod wasn't by her bed, and it wasn't tucked under the pillow. She trudged into the laundry room in a rumpled tank top, massaging her sore arms in the cool air, thinking perhaps it had gotten mixed in with some dirty clothes. She found it immediately, but it wasn't with the dirty laundry. 

“What are you doing?” Sarah asked in a short voice.

“Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent,” Cameron replied.

Sarah stared at her impatiently. “What?”

“You don't talk to me. Victor Hugo's quote implied that your music will.”

“I'll talk to you now. Give me my iPod, I want to go to bed.”

Cameron cocked her head to one side. “You frequently listen to Bob Marley. Have you ever shot a Sheriff?”

Sarah sighed.

“Do you believe we are getting together to fight a Holy Armageddon?”

“Cameron--”

“It is strange to juxtapose these ideas beside the repeated statement, 'Ev'rything's gonna be alright.'”

“Give me the iPod. Some of us sleep.” Sarah held out her hand, and Cameron finally acquiesced. Sarah wandered back to her room, slipped beneath her sheets, and put her earbuds in. She closed her eyes, pressed “play,” and tried to breathe deeply.

“I am worried about the music you listen to,” Cameron said from the doorway. Sarah's eyes shot open. “I did research on Bob Marley. He said, 'Truth is, everybody is going to hurt you.' If that's what his music is about, then I think it's making you tired.”

“Cameron, my life is people trying to hurt me-- trying to hurt my son,” Sarah snapped, not hiding her irritation here. Then she hesitated. She could feel the fatigue in her bones as her feelings almost surfaced, tried to form themselves into words. She bit them back. “Did you read the whole quote?” 

Cameron moved to Sarah's bed and sat on the edge. “Tell me.”

“Truth is, everybody is going to hurt you; you just gotta find the ones worth suffering for.”

Cameron put her hand over Sarah's in a gesture that made her uneasy with its genuineness. “Are you suffering?”

“If I suffer,” Sarah said heavily, “it is because suffering is the price we pay for the things that we love.”

Cameron studied Sarah's face for a moment. “Could I listen to your music with you?”

Sarah sighed and shot Cameron a look of skepticism that almost completely masked the affection that had somehow appeared there. She patted the empty side of the bed, closed her eyes, and handed Cameron one side of the earbuds as she felt her weight settle next to her. The headphone wires were not long, and Sarah felt her arm pressing against Cameron's as she drifted off.

Cameron didn't sleep. She stayed beside Sarah until morning, trying to read the music that the woman seemed to enjoy. She knew that she caused Sarah to suffer, but she now wondered what that meant.


End file.
